Chicago's gang problem

February 18, 2013

I think you should stop referring to the Chicago area killings as "gun violence" and call them by the more accurate term: "gang violence." While not all killings are gang related, neither are all killings gun related. But since about 80 percent of the Chicago area killings are committed by gang members, a more accurate reporting from you would be to call them "gang violence" and "gang killings".

Mary Schmich's comments in Wednesday's Tribune very accurately described the situation even further, (Let’s not rush to hatred in Hadiya story,” Column, Feb. 13). She writes about going back to when the "murder suspects were kids, to before they were born. It reaches deep into the decades, into the cycles of poverty and prison that have left generations of children growing up in jobless neighborhoods where fathers are absent and gangs are a form of family."

Bingo! I think “guns” are just a windmill that politicians like to talk about, without much substance or positive results. The real issue is a cultural one, where young, black, uneducated kids are having kids. And the fathers don't stick around, so the unfortunate girls are left with a husbandless future of poverty, gangs and losing their sons to crime. But none of the political or activist elites like to talk about that. Why not?